Starting Out With PPC, Need Some Advice
-
We are starting out with PPC for our site. I wanted to know what the best starting point is for our site. First, some basic info:
-
We sell thousands of products from a large number of manufacturers
-
We can offer the same prices as competitors, but we can't beat their prices
Here are my questions:
-
What would be my USP if my prices are the same, and we have the same store policies as competitors?
-
Is it best to start with product pages (as opposed to keywords)? Meaning, setting up a feed via MC and connecting to our adwords account.
Any advice is appreciated
-
-
I agree with David, find a reputable and experienced PPC company that is experienced with your situation, and pay for their expertise. Even if you are spending $1,500 per month on their services. Chances are they will also do MUCH MUCH better than you would in terms of your bottom line.
Let's just ignore the time savings from hiring out a good PPC company and focus on your return. Then it just comes down to a number game, and that should help you decide on how much you can invest on hiring a PPC company. Here's an example:
Let's say your budget is $4K a month on non-brand campaigns, and you're averaging 40 conversions, so your CPA is $100. If the PPC company does 100% better, you're getting 80 conversions for $5.5K a month ($4K + 1.5K service), and now your CPA is about $67. So what's better? You managing $4K and getting 40 conversions, or spending $5.5K and getting 80? And we haven't even factored in the possibility of an increase in average revenue per conversion yet! If the company can increase that too, well then... you get the picture.
Now, let's just focus on just the TIME savings, and let's say you can't go above $4K in total. So the PPC company eats $1.5K, and the rest goes towards your spend. Then the PPC company would only need to do 38% better to achieve the same results and number of conversions.
Hope all that made sense.
-
We do ppc and Let me just warn you if you are a drop shipper and can't do better pricing then your competitors and have no real advantage over the competitors it is very hard to make alot of money with ppc especially if you have small margins. I would try to find a ppc company that has experience with your situation and it would be worth every penny.
-
Generally in the UK the industry average is 12% of monthly Adwords spend.
-
No, I haven't heard of reputable PPC companies accepting of percentage of sales in lieu of a flat fee or percentage of the spend.
Why would they?
Because they're nice guys who want to mitigate their clients' risk? Um...no.
-
BTW, have you ever heard of PPC companies managing campaigns in return for a percentage of sales generated via PPC?
-
I have talked to a few reputable PPC companies. Many of them want what amounts to 30% of your PPC spend if you are on a small budget (around $1,500/mo), PLUS a setup fee of a few hundred dollars.
I talked to one that suggested starting with products and moving to other categories/section - a narrow to broad approach. This seems like the best way to go if you are starting.
The others want similar startup/monthly fees, but they will do the keyword research, ad group creation, etc.
It seems to me the best way to go is either create my own feed via MC and connect to my adwords account, or pay an exorbitant amount to a very reputable PPC company and hope their expertise will bring in revenue. I am leaning towards the product feed.
-
The problem with agencies -- at least the good ones -- is that they have little interest in small accounts. Commissions of $1,000 to $1,500 per month are often required to attract their attention. That implies an ad spend of $100,000 to $150,000 per annum.
You might try to educate yourself by joining the Google Engage program and taking other education steps. But this will most likely take weeks or months and you will waste hundreds or thousands of dollars along the way. And beware: the advice you get from Google is not only self-serving, but surprisingly ignorant about PPC basics.
I describe myself as a "web strategist" and PPC is only about 10% of what I do. I use PPC for only a few of my clients; a purely organic approach works best for most.
It's impossible to say more without knowing more about your client's competitive position. But I agree with emphasizing the USP, if prices are the same as competitors.
I've had success with ad copy that talked about:
- family-run business
- guaranteed
- personal service
- made in USA by licensed ________
- Save 12% in big summer sale
These lead directly to landing pages that repeat the keywords and and ad text phrases.
Too many people confuse PPC with a roulette wheel: if only you get lucky on a magic phrase you will win big. Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated.
PPC is hard.
You have to come up with ad groups containing tightly related groups of keywords. You have to test ad copy over time. You have to refine keyword, dropping some and breaking others into new ad groups. And you have to develop the capacity to easily create new landing pages.
-
Based on what you are saying, I'd suggest getting an Agency to set this campaign up for you, as it will take a lot of time. Getting the feed in of your products will help a lot, but there will be a large number of ads you'd want to run alongside your individual products to your category pages etc.
SEOMoz probably isn't the best place to ask about PPC, so I'd recommend asking some more questions on a PPC forum.
You'd be best to lead with a USP - perhaps free delivery, next day delivery, local call centers, live chat, freephone numbers, etc.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
PPC CPC Increase after Website Speed Issues Were Addressed
We recently moved our hosting provider over from WPEngine to Site Ground. We increased our page speed scores from D/F to a B this past week. However, we noticed an increase in our PPC cost per click due to the website speed being slower... we cannot figure out why this would happen. Has anyone else experienced something similar? A PPC landing page we have is---> https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/plan-a/
Paid Search Marketing | | LindsayE0 -
Advantage in PPC for megaspenders like VistaPrint and Office Depot?
I sell niche printing and office supplies. Our site goes after certain specific keywords, and we use PPC where we compete against small companies such as ourselves, and the mega companies like VistaPrint and Office Depot. I know about how quality score affects our PPC costs, I was wondering if these huge companies have any other advantage against us in the PPC world. Does their name recognition give them a quality score of 10 on every keyword they buy? Is there a way to find out what your competition is paying on PPC keywords? Do they have other advantages in PPC that I may not know about? Thank you so much.
Paid Search Marketing | | Ryan_B0 -
Will PPC elsewhere on my domain help my organic SEO?
I have an e-commerce site with a small product line which an on-going organic SEO campaign. As a side project, I'm planning on doing some PPC testing with a highly converting product squeeze page, which I'll run Google ads to gain traffic. (this is PPC only and for this page I am not concerned with organic SEO traffic - although of course the page itself will be fully optimized). I am wondering whether to run this squeeze page on a sub-domain or sub-directory of the existing site, OR to host it on a completely fresh domain? I would like to know if as side-effect my existing Website benefit 'organically' from some of the PPC traffic, helping with it's domain authority, etc.,? or could this possibly do any harm? p.s. Bear in mind this is not going to be a page visible on the on the main site itself, it's a separate entity for PPC. Would be great to have some expert Moz eyes on this and opinions. Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | GregDixson0 -
PPC for a music shop - advice
Hi, I'm pretty new to this but I'm doing my best, so I've created a few campaigns such as 'Guitars' and 'Drums' and started to add keywords to each one such as 'buy guitars online' etc would it also be wise to add brands to this campaign? or should I create a completely different campaign focusing solely on brands? What would you recommend? Thanks, Dan
Paid Search Marketing | | Sparkstone0 -
PPC Keyword Phrases and Options
Sorry in advance.... I've used search on the SEOMoz site and Google but not found an exact answer to my question. I am looking at starting PPC campaign - do I need all variations of these keywords or is google clever enough to work on dashes etc... I want the keyword phrase to come up with loads of different locations. Do I need to input them all separately like I have below? 1. Keyword Sample Phrase 2. Keyword-Sample Phrase 3. KeywordSample Phrase 4. Keyword Sample Phrases 5. Keyword Sample Phrase Location 6. Keyword-Sample Phrase Location 7. KeywordSample Phrase Location 8. Keyword Sample Phrases Location Thanks in advance....
Paid Search Marketing | | JohnW-UK0 -
What are the best ways that PPC and SEO can work together?
This has come up recently internally as we are an agency that traditionally only focuses on SEO. However, when asked to articulate the benefits of how they can work together I normally see rather vague and non-actionable answers that don't really translate to real life always. I can understand how you can use SEO techniques to improve the ROAS of a PPC campaign by improving the quality of a landing page. I am also aware of a number of ways you can use Adwords data from your campaign to improve your SEO campaign but I am curious to know. How else can the two channels work together to help each other out?
Paid Search Marketing | | SearchAcademy0 -
Fell for TopSEOs...advice?
I'm so embarrassed I could just spit, but instead I am seeking some friendly advice. I run ContentEqualsMoney.com, a copywriting company. We've been in business for just over a year and have done incredibly well. Of course, we do SEO copywriting but really focus on content marketing as a system for our clients. So last month I got a random call from TopSEOs.com. I remember looking at their site last year but didn't put much thought into it. When they called, my ears perked at the pitch. They could submit our site for ranking and we would only pay if we were found in the top ten. I thought - what the heck, what are the chances my site would rank. I checked them out on opensiteexplorer and saw they had crazy SEO juice so happy times. Then last week I saw the charge on our company credit card, sure enough we had made it to the top ten in SEO copywriting. I was flabbergasted but happy as a clam. So yesterday I check out their site and we were ranked #1 for SEO Copywriting. For about two seconds I was jumping for joy...but after that I got sick to my stomach. In all the chaos with end of year stuff and the holidays I never considered the fact that they didn't take any references. They never evaluated anything. Here we were ranked #1 and they couldn't possibly know anything about us. Not to mention that there are plenty of more established SEO Copywriting companies. I'm starting to freak out... I looked at my "competition" and buzzwrite.com (ranked #9) doesn't even exist anymore. So I searched for "topseos scam" and found a wealth of info from 2009 and 2010. I feel like such an idiot. We thought we were paying for an evaluation process but I guess we just got hosed for a ludicrous ranking. Now I don't know what to do. I want to hide under a rock. Do I need to worry about losing authority cred for being on this site? Should I tell them to keep the money but take my profile off their site asap? Or should I just keep my head down, see if any leads generate and then make sure to not pay them any additional monies? I was going to ask this privately but if my stupidity can help anybody else avoid these people that would make me feel less like upchucking. Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | AmieMarse0 -
PPC Billing
I'd like to add PPC as a service for my company. However I'm at a loss as to how to charge for it. I've received cold calls from those "SEO guys" charging $200 for PPC services. But I doubt that they're very profitable or even ethical. For you PPC guys, are you billing hourly on top of the campaign, and how are you outlining this for your customers? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | WilliamBay0